Brazen Serpent

The Brazen Serpent is a giant painting by the Russian artist of Italian origin Fyodor Bruni (1799-1875), completed in 1841. It is part of the collection of the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg (inventory number Zh-5070). The size of the painting is 565×852 cm.

Bruni's inspiration for the painting was a story described in the Old Testament about how the Jewish people, led out of Egypt by the prophet Moses, began to lose faith and murmur after years of wandering in the stony desert. This led to God's punishment — a rain of poisonous snakes to save them from the deadly bites of a brazen serpent.

Bruni worked on this painting for about fifteen years: he informed the Imperial Society for the Encouragement of the Arts that he had begun work on the large painting in February 1827, and completed it in 1841. In 1833-1836 he worked in Italy, then he was called back to Saint Petersburg to teach…

摘自英文维基百科「The Brazen Serpent (Bruni)」（CC BY-SA 4.0），暂时没有中文条目。